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An Investigation Of The Satellite Poems In Melville's Clarel, William H. Wasilewski
An Investigation Of The Satellite Poems In Melville's Clarel, William H. Wasilewski
Graduate Dissertations and Theses
Though critics have completely disregarded their presence (Arvin, for example), or relegated them to a minor position, the satellite poems are one of the most important devices that Melville uses in Clarel. Forty-five in number (if one includes the bits of song that are present), they appear in a variety of forms at strategic points within the work. Melville, for example, introduces bawdy lyrics, a recitative, love songs, hymns, variations of the nursery rhyme and the traditional ballad, chants, a mystical inscription, several boisterous drinking songs, and a dirge.
Regarding the larger framework of the poem proper, the satellite …